The Power of Play

Last month, JWT released their eighth annual “10 Trends Report”, a compilation of research performed in the preceding year in a variety of areas that “point to trends that will help define and shift the near future.” Topics range from “Peer Power” to “Predictive Personalization”, but all address the continued convergence of business, technology, and culture in our lives.

One of the trends, called “Play As a Competitive Advantage,” highlights the need for play as “a vital human activity, as natural as dreaming and as beneficial as sleep.” Not that this surprised Jonathan Ages, founder of Blood, Sweat & Cheers, his company that “finds the most fun & active stuff to do with friends.” He came to the idea after noting that while there were plenty of resources to find the best bars, restaurants, and places to shop, there lacked a way that “I wanted, and my friends wanted…to help us be fun, active, and sociable.” So in April of 2011, Blood, Sweat, & Cheers was launched first in New York City and then nationally to serve just that purpose.

Since then, Ages has noticed he and his friends weren’t alone. He noted that though there had always been softball beer leagues for decades, he saw “this whole cultural movement was exploding that doesn’t need to be traditional conception of sports and activity.” What does he mean? Activities he and his staff find, like a 4k Tap 'N' Run that replaces water stations with “chug stations”, or a 1.5-mile Cupid's Nationwide Undie Run (coming up on 2/9). The idea being that, “Come Monday morning, that’s such a much more interesting story at the water cooler than, ‘Dude, I got so wasted at the bar last night’.”

And so far he’s found an enthusiastic audience. Ages reports that on a per capita basis, events Blood, Sweat & Cheers send out via their weekly newsletter get shared by their subscribers 18 times more often than Urban Daddy, and 26 times more than Thrillist. And while the average Facebook user has 262 friends, the average Blood, Sweat & Cheers subscriber has about 600. And because Ages makes sure every activity they write about is something social, it matters even more when he says his users say, “Hey, I’m going to share this on Facebook, I want to do it, and I want to invite everyone I know to go and do it with me.”

Though he couldn’t share too many specifics, Ages has been hiring and is looking forward to a very fun-filled 2013. Or, as he put it when asked about his outlook for this year: “Game on.”